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City leaders determined to use global spotlight to build cachet
January 28th, 2012
“In 2003, John Madden went on and on about how wonderful San Diego was when they hosted the Super Bowl and their image got a nice boost,” said Nienstedt, whose company for the last decade has studied the impact of the Super Bowl on its host city. “In 2009, the network showed some really nice night shots and entertainment in Tampa and that city got a nice boost.”
Are San Diegans disengaged?
November 16th, 2011
Before entering the Bankers Hill lair of San Diego pollster John Nienstedt, visitors will notice a sheet of paper taped to his office door bearing a red-lettered quote from Oscar Wilde: “‘Public opinion’ is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.”
Citizen Engagement: Defining Metrics and Ranking San Diego
November 15th, 2011
Our very own John Nienstedt sits down with Digital Politics Radio and discusses defining and measuring civic engagement, latest rankings of top cities and reasons behind lack of engagement with insights about San Diego. Also does civic engagement lead to voting, role of polling and future trends?
San Diego, we have an engagement problem
November 6th, 2011
Voters approved the building of Petco Park in 1998, but it didn’t open until 2004. City employee pension plans have been underfunded. An airport with a single runway serves 3 million residents, despite numerous studies decrying its inadequacy. These three civic situations indicate regionwide dysfunction.
San Diego considers an openly gay GOP mayor
October 8th, 2011
Two leading Republican contenders for mayor of America’s eighth-largest city are openly gay, and voters have barely noticed. It doesn’t come up at campaign appearances or in local news coverage.
District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and City Councilman Carl DeMaio haven’t made their marks as gay rights activists, which may help explain why their sexual orientation has been a non-issue even among social conservatives. Neither makes a secret of being gay, but they don’t draw attention to it, either.
Blackout a wake-up call to prepare for disasters
September 24th, 2011
When the lights went out all over the county this month — and for the first couple of hours, San Diego Gas & Electric said it didn’t know why or for how long the power would be off — some people found themselves a bit panicked and more than a bit unprepared.
Flashlights? Water? Food? A radio not tethered to a plug? A phone that was tethered to the wall?
Don’t let machines do the talking for us
August 21st, 2011
We don’t talk anymore. Oh sure, we communicate. It’s just that most of it is done through transistors and computer chips. The human element is all but gone. We don’t chat over the backyard fence as much. We don’t sit on the porch and engage neighbors as they walk by.
Pension battle pitched over signature-gathering
June 26th, 2011
A furious fight is underway over a proposal that would essentially phase out San Diego’s current pension plan in favor of a 401(k) model for most city workers — and it hasn’t even qualified for the June 2012 ballot yet.
Leverage Some CERC Power: 7000+ Participants now in Database
May 16th, 2011
As a full-service research firm, CERC conducts and recruits focus groups on virtually any topic. Consumer, B2B, high-value, political, ad testing, we do it all and now you can leverage the power of CERC’s massive pre-qualified participant database. More than 7,000
84% Hung up on Robo-poll: Another Test Raises Serious Questions
May 16th, 2011
Frequent readers of The Edge know that we take every opportunity to test the claim that robo-polling is on par with surveys conducted by live interviewers. Our latest experiement came on election eve last November. A client wanted to get a quick read on how the national election results might be affecting local turnout. The idea was to
